Exploring Purpose:
Student Purpose Initiative for High Schools
Join MCC’s brand new Student Purpose Initiative and you’ll receive free resources — including lesson plans, activities, slides decks, reflection questions, students journals, and facilitation guides — to help high school students develop a clearer sense of purpose and energizing career-related goals.
If you’d like to learn more before signing up, please schedule a call with Mike McLaughlin, MCC’s Schools & Parenting Programs Manager.
Research shows that about 40% of teens report experiencing little or no sense of purpose or meaning in life, which is associated with elevated anxiety, depression, and disengagement at school. On the other hand, helping students develop a sense of purpose strongly correlates with academic motivation, resilience, psychological well-being, and career readiness.*
We’re excited to launch this brand new pilot for U.S.-based high schools, which includes funding to pay a limited number of schools to implement one of our new purpose strategies and to survey students to help us understand the impact of the initiative.
Details about the 2026-27 School Year Initiative
Who can join?
Any U.S.-based high school that would like to use new resources from Making Caring Common to foster meaning and purpose. We’re looking for schools that have NO active purpose-fostering intervention or set of resources.
Participating schools will receive
New meaning and purpose resources from MCC
A step-by-step guide to support implementation at your school
Support from the MCC team
Up to $1,000 for schools and up to $100 for participating teachers and school leaders
If you’d like to learn more before signing up, please schedule a call with Mike McLaughlin, MCC’s Schools & Parenting Programs Manager.
Requirements
All participating schools will be asked to:
Identify a School Champion: a school administrator, leader, counselor or teacher who will guide the work at your school and who will communicate with MCC about implementation at your school.
Have all students, and some teachers, at your school complete a pre and post survey to measure impact and join a focus group (October 2026 and April of 2027)
Implement one of three new MCC resources with high school students (below)
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Schools recruit staff volunteers to become Purpose Mentors.
Students complete a survey to share how strong their sense of purpose is, if they want to work with a mentor this year, and which mentor they’d like to work with.
MCC shares a report with your school, with the names of all students who are seeking support as well as the mentors that they’d like to work with.
Purpose Mentors use MCC’s resources to mentor students throughout the year.
Mentees will share a culminating purpose reflection.
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Schools recruit a group of Student Leaders who will lead 4 whole-school or whole-grade purpose events as well as a group of staff volunteers to support and prepare these students.
4 times between October and April:
Staff and students will use MCC’s Purpose Toolkit to prepare for a whole school event.
Students Leaders, with staff support, will lead a whole school purpose event.
At these events, all students will be assigned a multi-grade student group who they will work with to reflect on, and discuss, purpose and meaning.
Each student will create a purpose artifact
Each group will create a shared purpose artifact
Student groups will share a culminating purpose reflection.
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Schools recruit a group of staff Advisors to lead a 12 - session purpose advisory series.
Advisors lead 12 weekly 30-minute advisory sessions with their classes
Students complete independent purpose activities in-between sessions.
Advisors meet with small groups of students at least twice across 12 weeks to provide additional mentorship and support.
Students will share a culminating purpose reflection.
If you’d like to learn more before signing up, please schedule a call with Mike McLaughlin, MCC’s Schools & Parenting Programs Manager.
* SOURCES:
Making Caring Common. (2023). On Edge: Understanding and Preventing Young Adults’ Mental Health Challenges.
Sharma, Kim, Bryan. (2017). The Effects of Purpose Orientations on Recent High School Graduates’ College Application Decisions. Journal of College Access
Fuligni, et. al. (2023) Adolescents who have a sense of purpose are happier and healthier. How can we help? UCLA Newsroom.
Sepulveda, Lincoln, Liang, Klein, White, Hill, Perella. (2021). MPOWER: The Impact of a Purpose Program on Adolescents’ Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations. Frontiers in Psychology.